


The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

by allimarie_xf



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Arrow (TV 2012) Season 7, F/M, Feelings, Happy Ending, Olicity Reunion, Post-7x22, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Episode: S07e22 You Have Saved This City, Romance, all the feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 02:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19097461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allimarie_xf/pseuds/allimarie_xf
Summary: He is waiting for her on the other side.~~~Post-7x22 Olicity Reunion!~~~





	The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

**Author's Note:**

> For your listening pleasure: [Moon and Moon](https://youtu.be/fffMyWg7sOg) by Bat for Lashes and [Cusco](https://youtu.be/FiO5nIwlDZQ) by Allie Crow Buckley. :)
> 
> >>>\------------|>
> 
> I know this story is coming 3 weeks late.
> 
> I have been kind of not-okay since May 13 when the finale aired. Not that I was unhappy with the ending, of course! What we got was so beautiful! But for me, nothing would have ever been enough, really. So I've been away from tumblr and most of the fandom (still on our Discord server, though! message me on [tumblr](https://allimariexf.tumblr.com/) if you want to join us there for fun Olicity discussion, group episode rewatches, etc.!) for 3 weeks because I felt too overwhelmed with emotions to join in.
> 
> But writing this has been cathartic, and I am hoping that I will be able to rejoin the living and enjoy hiatus now. :) 
> 
> If you're still here, thanks for listening to me babble. ;) And please please please leave kudos and a comment if you liked it! My low spirits would love you for it. <3
> 
> And thanks forever to Emily Bett Rickards and Stephen Amell for bringing Oliver and Felicity to life. They have changed me forever and I will never be ready to let them go.

 

When she stepped through the portal the first thing she noticed was this: a trillion stars scattered over a sky that was too big for her to take in in a single glance.

It felt unreal, like she had stepped into an impossible planetarium, until the first whisper of a warm breeze pushed a few loose strands of hair against her cheek.

And then she realized the solid ground under her feet was carpeted by soft grass, and she became aware that she was standing inside a perfect summer night, and she understood that this place was _more_ than real.

Her eyes strayed over the bright pinpricks of light until a shower of meteors led her gaze toward the horizon, and there she saw a hill that contained a throng of humanity.

Except, improbably, the throng was populated with just one man, repeated over and over; one lonely man occupying infinite universes in a single time and space. Their backs were to her as they looked off into the distance.

Her eyes fell immediately to one pair of unmoving broad shoulders within the multitude, one man who was identical to all the others in every way except one:

This one was waiting for her.

Without a second thought she began to move toward him, and with each unerring step in his direction he came into greater focus while his doppelgangers started to fade away, disappearing without fanfare until he was alone on the hill.

It took a dozen steps to reach him, or a maybe million. She might have walked for the span of a lifetime, but he stood quietly, never turning around.

Waiting patiently for her.

Finally she stopped just behind him, when the only thing separating them was that final step. She didn’t fully believe he was _real_ until he shifted on his feet restlessly, and the familiarity of the movement almost brought her to her knees.

“You found me,” Oliver whispered, still turned away from her, and his words barely reached her before they were swallowed up by the surrounding universe.

“I said I would.”

She watched the lift and fall of his shoulders as he took a deep breath and released it. There was tension in his body, and it was echoed in his voice when he said, “This has happened before, thousands of times. I wait for you, and you find me. It’s my favorite dream.”

She felt a stir of uneasiness.

“Oliver....” She lifted her arm, about to touch his back and close that final distance, but he flinched violently, so she let her arm fall and her weight shift to her back foot. “Oliver.”

“Felicity,” he sighed, and his voice caught on each syllable like feet tripping over divots in a once well-known path. Even so, she heard the warning in his tone. _“Please.”_

The word hit her with almost tangible force. It was exactly the word that was screaming through her own body: _please. It’s been too long. I’m ready. I’m here. Please._ But she held back, knowing he needed her to; respecting and trusting their nonverbal communication as if no time had passed.

“Oliver, I’m here. It’s _me.”_ She was caught between urgency and patience. It had been twenty years, and she couldn’t stand to wait a moment longer. But then again, time was on their side now, wasn’t it? She had said she would always wait for him; she could wait a little bit longer. “Look at me.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. I promised Felicity I wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Oliver, I _am_ Felicity -”

He sighed, and he seemed to release some of his tension. “I know how this conversation goes: you ask me to go with you, but when I turn around, I’m alone. And I’m left talking to myself.” The hitch in his chest might have been a laugh, but his words were steeped with a deep sorrow that Felicity recognized down to her toes.

A tendril of dread snaked around her heart. Mar Novu hadn’t mentioned the possibility that Oliver might not be ready to see _her._ “You’re not alone, Oliver, and you never have been. I told you you’d never leave me, and you _haven’t.”_

His head tilted slightly, an almost imperceptible movement that communicated volumes to her. She had his attention; he was listening despite himself.

She took a deep breath, and the words came to her like they always had. “You were always with me, Oliver, in every moment.” Memories of the previous twenty years flashed through her mind, and the images filled her with conviction. “I recognized you in Mia’s intelligence and compassion and bravery; in William’s strength and heart and tenacity.”

Oliver bowed his head as if he couldn’t hold his head up under the weight of her words, and she chanced a half step toward him.

“You were with me as I raised Mia. You were there as I watched over William. I never made a single choice without thinking of you, and I never could have done any it without you. You were with me the whole time.”

He was half-turned toward her and she could see that his eyes were squeezed shut. “I’ve seen them, William and Mia,” he said in a low voice, and it was almost a confession, a deeply guarded secret torn from his heart. “I’ve watched them grow up in my dreams. I’ve seen William’s success, his bravery and passion. I’ve seen your influence over him.” He was nodding vigorously with eyes still closed. “I’m so proud.”

His words caused something to flare on the edge of Felicity’s consciousness, but she was already speaking, needing tell him more. She stretched her hand toward him but didn’t complete the connection, letting it hang in the air. “He built a company from the ground up, Oliver, faster than I would have thought possible. He is so smart. Like you.”

Oliver was shaking his head, but she sensed that he wanted to believe her.

“And Mia, Oliver, she is so strong, so driven to do the right thing.” The corner of her mouth lifted as she thought of their daughter. “Also just like -”

“You,” he jumped in, anticipating and inverting what she was going to say. “You had her train with Nyssa so that she would have the skills to survive, but those skills would have been meaningless without _your heart.”_

Felicity stared at him, breathing shallowly, surprised at his outburst but more than that, trying to process what it meant. Because the _something_ that had registered in her consciousness when he spoke about watching her raise their children was growing into a full-blown hope that he might have _actually witnessed their entire lives_. He might have really _been_ there, not just his memory, but _him._ A profound joy was awakening in her heart. She took a deep breath and let her reaching fingers land lightly on his arm, willing his next words to confirm that what he had seen hadn’t just been a dream.

He shivered at her touch and then stilled completely, until all at once the tension left his body and he turned fully toward her.

Felicity’s breath caught in her throat at the first sight of his face, aged but still perfectly _Oliver,_ and even more achingly, devastatingly beautiful than she remembered. He didn’t meet her eyes, focusing somewhere over her shoulder instead.

She let her fingers slide over his bicep. “Do you remember,” and she refused to acknowledge the optimism inherent in her word choice, “how I thought of you every day? Do you remember how you were there with me every time I closed my eyes, at night or just for a second in the middle of a long day?”

Oliver’s face had fallen, his eyebrows tightly furrowed as he shook his head.

Felicity saw his struggle, but she couldn’t have stopped her words if she’d wanted to. “Do you remember how I would turn out the lights every night and crawl into bed, _our_ bed, and close my eyes and think of you until I could see your face, hear your voice, feel your touch?”

Oliver sucked in a harsh breath, scrubbing his fingertips over his face.

“Do you remember what would happen then?”

Oliver went utterly still, and Felicity held her breath. After a long moment, he let his hands fall away and he looked back at her.

Their eyes connected, and awareness of a thousand unspoken things crackled along their locked gaze as reality seemed to solidify and click into place around them.

They stared at each other with wide eyes and heaving shoulders in silence until Felicity couldn’t bear not knowing for a moment longer. She prompted desperately, “Do you remember, Oliver?”

He didn’t respond right away, but she could see in the intensity of his gaze, the sudden heat in his eyes, that he did remember. He knew.

She pressed on anyway, knowing he needed her to confirm it for him. “Do you remember how I would touch myself every night?”

“Yes,” he whispered with a mix of longing and uncertainty.

“It was the only time I didn’t feel your absence like a physical _ache.”_

Felicity felt his hand cover hers where she was still clutching his bicep. His skin was warm and _real,_ giving her the strength to continue. “I felt your absence every time you weren’t there leaning against the back of my desk chair; every time I sat on the couch and your arms weren’t wrapped around me.” His fingers tightened on hers. “But even though I couldn’t _feel_ you there, I could still _feel_ you there.” She growled in frustration. “And yes, I know that sounds like the same word.”

Oliver huffed a startled laugh, and his other hand reached out to tangle with hers.

“What I am trying to say is that for one hour a night, I would give in. I would close my eyes and recreate your touch, and it was the only time I felt complete. As long as I didn't open my eyes I could feel you with me, and it was enough to get me through the other 23 hours of every day.”

Oliver turned her hand over so that their palms touched while his thumb stroked lightly over her skin, and his husky words made her shiver. “I had thousands of dreams just like that, Felicity. Lying in our bed, running my fingers over your skin, sinking into your body. It felt so real.” His gaze dropped briefly to their linked hands. “As real as you feel right now.”

She could see anxiety etched in the lines of his face, the warring hope and hesitation. She spoke with quiet confidence, “That’s because it wasn’t a dream, Oliver. Not then, and not now.”

He raised his head and looked at her under heavy brows, something sharp and needy in his eyes, and breathed, "I don't know how to tell if you're real."

Understanding immediately, she brought their clasped hands to rest over his heart, letting him read the unwavering conviction in her eyes. “Then look at me. Listen to my voice.”

He gazed back at her steadily as his thumb caressed her fingers. Watching his face, she saw the exact moment he registered the wedding ring, still on her finger after all this time, and she held her breath as he teetered on the edge of belief and acceptance. “I can’t lose you.” The words were out of her mouth before she realized she had spoken.

She saw the certainty settle in his eyes a split second before a smile washed over his features, and he reached up with shaking hands to frame her face. “You never lost me, Felicity. I’m here. Always.”

“Oliver.” She smiled brightly up at him even as tears spilled down her cheeks and along his fingers.

He stepped toward her then, pulling her into his arms and wrapping her in his body for the first time in twenty years. He pressed his lips against her head and crooned her name into her hair.

Felicity buried her face into his shoulder, inhaling his lost, familiar scent while he touched her everywhere, smoothing along the lines of her body and stroking his hands over her head. When he finally stilled his roving movements, he cupped the back of her neck and urged her head up. She looked up and met his waiting gaze for a single breathless moment, then watched his mouth descend upon hers.

She couldn’t believe how soft his lips were, how perfectly they fit against hers with just the right amount of pressure. It was infinitely better than her best memories. They traded soft, caressing kisses, absorbed in a feeling of utter completion. For once they weren’t in a rush, and every moment was a revelation. She walked her fingertips up his torso and opened her mouth, breathing him in as he changed the angle of their lips. His hands drifted through her hair and along her cheeks while he nipped at her lower lip, and she lifted on her toes and anchored an arm around his neck, pulling him deeper. His tongue reached out to meet hers in a slow tasting, a give and take that gradually became deeper. Her body echoed the movement of their tongues, pressing and sliding, sending sparks of sensation along long-forgotten pathways. Necessity had worn their desire down to a bearable ache, but now it burst back to life with a raw electricity that was just this side of painful.

Eventually, Felicity slid her hands up his broad back and he leaned back just enough to nuzzle her nose. Oliver closed his eyes against the onslaught of emotions, his heaving breath mingling with hers. “How?” But instead of waiting for her to answer, he kissed her again, his restless hands roaming over her body, settling on her hips for a moment, then smoothing over her ass, pulling her pelvis to nestle against his.

Felicity pressed her fingertips against the warm skin of his neck and pulled him down so she could rest her forehead against his, so that their lips just touched as she spoke. “I don’t know. I don’t know how any of this is possible.”

Abruptly Oliver laid his hands along her face and pulled back, looking at her searchingly. “Felicity, is it really you?”

Felicity looked back at him for a long moment, letting him look at her, confident that he would find the answer to his own question. His hesitation was completely understandable; he had been alone for so long, and how was any of this possible? But here they were, and she couldn’t suppress the smile that broke over her face as her eyes darted between his. “It’s me, Oliver.”

He smiled in response, helpless against the hope that was beating in his heart. “How long has it been?”

And her eyes only dimmed a tiny bit as she answered, “Twenty years.”

“Twenty years.” Oliver looked off in the distance, clearly shaken by the new information, but after only a moment he met her eyes resolutely. “And no time.”

She nodded, understanding. “Right. No time at all.”

He let his hands drift over her shoulders and down her arms, linking her fingers with his. Felicity sensed a slight reluctance as he leaned his forehead back against hers, and she gave his fingers an encouraging squeeze. “S-sometimes I thought it was all a dream. Before...all of this.”

He paused long enough that Felicity made a small hum of confusion, prompting him to clarify.

Oliver cleared his throat. “Sometimes I thought I never made it off my father’s boat, that maybe I drowned and everything that happened afterward wasn’t real.”

Felicity went still as she digested his words, and the pain he must have felt.

But then he leaned back so he could look at her directly, and his eyes were soft and bright. “But then I would think about you, and I knew it wasn’t a dream. You, Felicity Smoak, are something I never could have made up, never in all my wildest dreams.” He lifted a hand to her cheek and looked at her with eyes that were bluer than she remembered. “God, Felicity, I love you so much.”

Felicity swallowed heavily against the tears that were collecting in her throat, and she leaned in to kiss him again. They gave in again to the elation of simple touch, hair raising along skin and nerve endings pricking to life until they pulled apart, panting. Felicity’s fingertips strayed over his face, refamiliarizing herself with the shape she had long ago memorized. Her thumbs drifted over his lips and cheeks and chin, and she leaned back, preoccupied with examining the colors in his beard.

“I’ve missed seeing your face. Touching your lips.” One hand paused over his lips, while the other drifted absently down his chest. Her eyes went slightly unfocused as she murmured, “Feeling your abs.”

Oliver laughed, a soft sound that came from deep in his chest, and Felicity’s eyes snapped to his.

“I meant to say that out loud.”

He lifted a single eloquent brow.

“Oliver Queen, I said that on purpose!”

Instead of answering, he caught her up in another kiss, cutting her off her protests, and Felicity’s hands ran through his hair as she kissed him back with equal enthusiasm. She parted her lips, speaking into his mouth without conscious thought. “I love you,” she murmured as she wrapped her arms around his neck and stroked her tongue against his. “I love you so much.” She stretched up on her toes and let him pull her off her feet.

Oliver was caught in a haze of sensation, so it took him a minute to register what she'd said. When he did, he dragged his mouth from her jaw and let her slide to the ground, bringing his hands to her face so that she would focus on him.

Felicity blinked in confusion. “What?”

He remained quiet, looking at her with soft eyes, waiting.

“What?” She played back the previous few minutes in her head, cocking her head at him when she realized what must have made him pull back. She cupped his jaw and ran her thumb over his bottom lip, leaving no room for doubt. “Oliver. Of course I love you.”

He held his breath, watching her with flickering eyes, until a wave of relief and something indefinable broke over his features. She placed her hands on his cheeks and raised up on her toes.

“I love you, Oliver. I never stopped loving you. Never, for a single second.”

He nodded against the hands that were still squeezing his face, and swallowed visibly.

“Okay?”

“Okay.” He covered her hands with his and then took her left hand between his, tracing her wedding ring with his index finger. “You’re still wearing it.”

She was already staring steadily at him when he finally lifted his eyes to her gaze, and she smiled solemnly. “Of course.”

“I wanted to believe my dreams were real,” he began, and he looked down almost shyly, “but realistically speaking, we hardly had any time together. Only seven years, and for so much of that time we were apart.” He sighed. “So much wasted time."

“Hey. Remember what I said the night you left?”

He bobbed his head, knowing what she was referring to.

She knew he knew, but she said it anyway. “No regrets.”

He nodded again, like he did that night, a conscious effort to comply with her demand. “No, no regrets. It’s just that I thought, logically, that maybe you might have been able to move on. You were the love of my life, Felicity, but that doesn’t mean that I -”

“Stop.” Felicity’s fingers flew to his lips, and there was steel in her tone. Only when she sensed that he accepted the absurdity of what he had been about to say did she continue. “There has only ever been you. There has only ever been us.” She grabbed his hand again, and used her body to press it against his chest, so their clasped hands were trapped between their hearts. “There has only ever been this.”

After a long moment, he blinked in concession, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as his eyes dropped to her lips and his body followed, surrendering to her pull. She sighed into his mouth as he parted for her, and she snaked her arms around his waist. She held him as close as possible and deepened the kiss, opening to him and letting him take what he needed, offering her lips and neck and jaw, fitting her body between his legs, trying to erase the space between them. Finally he drew back, his lips closing over hers in a soft kiss, his nose rubbing her nose, his stubbly cheek sliding against her jaw, until his stormy eyes met hers again.

Felicity knew his intense emotions were reflected back at him when she gazed up at him, but her voice was breathless with hope and excitement as she asked, "What now?"

Oliver’s face broke into a blinding grin as he replied, “Now, we live.”

He pointed down the hill to where he had been gazing when she first saw him, and laid before them, incomprehensible to the eye but somehow fathomable, was a landscape of infinitely overlapping realities and possibilities. And she understood. All they had to do was make a choice. Eternity was before them, and they could live an infinite number of different lives of their choosing, or just one life forever, or any combination they chose. The only thing that was certain was that they would remain together. Always.

 

* * *

 

Felicity checked the email on her phone one last time as she stopped outside the door in the Harvard dormitory. C103. This was the place.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t in the habit of dealing with rich frat boys, not exactly. This was her second summer at MIT, and while her full-ride scholarship took care of tuition, last year she’d begun to pick up tutoring gigs in order to cover her living expenses in Boston’s inflated economy; Ivy League students with more money than diligence had become, quite literally, her bread and butter.

It was just that they didn’t usually ask her to meet them in their dorms. But this one had come up with some silly excuse as to why he didn’t want to be seen in a one-on-one tutoring session in the library, or the student lounge, or a Starbucks - something about a rare but potentially severe allergy to certain books - and for some reason, she’d gone along with it. Not that she believed his lame excuse for a second, but something about his voice over the phone made her decide to trust him anyway.

Which was actually crazy, but, well, here she was. She lifted her knuckles to the door before she had a chance to change her mind and knocked briskly. It wasn’t until the door swung away from her raised hand that she realized she was still clutching her red-cased phone.

But she didn’t have time to think about that, because standing right in front of her was the most impossibly beautiful man she had ever laid eyes on, and she realized with dawning horror that words were already beginning to spill out of her mouth.

“Oliver Queen?”

He was staring at her with a sort of open-mouthed fascination, as if she were some kind of car wreck he couldn’t look away from.

“Hi.” She extended the phone-wielding hand toward him. “I’m Felicity Smoak.”

He smirked in undeniable amusement as his gaze dropped to her phone, but when he looked back up and pinned her with an electric blue gaze, his eyes softened with something else, something she found impossible to look away from.

She was in so much trouble.

 

(not The End)

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: it's come to my attention that some people might like some clarification on the ending, so here you go, though I intentionally left the ending vague on purpose because it's more a _possibility_ that you can choose to ignore if you want to, but I will explain what I had in mind. (And keep in mind that Crisis on Infinite Earths is still coming and I have no idea how that's going to resolve, and I know the comics suggest that all the multiverse merge into one single universe? But clearly for the sake of this story the multiverse still exists, so.)
> 
> Essentially the idea is that Oliver and Felicity go on to spend eternity together, and, because of the existence of the multiverse, they can live as many different lives as they want (from start to finish, not knowing that they're "soulmates," for lack of a better term, until they die). Kinda like reincarnation. But they always meet back up on this plane (remembering their previous lives), and they can choose to go to other planes too, where they can live happily together and with other people (or "souls," maybe) that they love, like William, Mia, Thea, Tommy, and literally everyone in the show. So the ending I chose to show was just one possible Alternate Universe life they might have chosen to live. Essentially what I'm suggesting is that in my headcanon, all AU stories might conceivably be canon, might actually be our Oliver and Felicity's souls, just reliving a different set of lives before their souls meet back up after death. And that more stories could be told of all our favorites living together in a pocket universe of their own.
> 
> I hope that makes sense. It's a bit out there with the whole "souls" concept, but I didn't bring the Multiverse into the Arrowverse 🙄 and I figure, if Oliver has to die because of it, we should at least get something positive out of that. 😉
> 
> Back to your previously scheduled endnotes:
> 
> I need to share the poem that inspired the title: [The Lonely Hunter](https://allpoetry.com/poem/13210957-The-Lonely-Hunter-by-William-Sharp) by "Fiona MaCleod" (aka William Sharp).
> 
> (Okay so really the title is from a book by Carson McCullers that I love but that has nothing to do with Olicity or this fic. But the title always stuck with me and it seemed right for this fic, and I knew it was inspired by a poem so I googled the poem to see if it might be applicable and YOU GUYS. I CRIED THE SECOND I READ IT AND DID NOT STOP FOR TWO DAYS.) 
> 
> Basically the poem is about a woman whose lover has died and she visits his grave and she imagines that wherever he is, he is dreaming about her and calling for her to follow him. And so she is alive, but she cannot really partake in the joys of life because her heart is forever searching for him. JUST LIKE WE KNOW HOW IT HAD TO HAVE BEEN FOR FELICITY: only half living her life, waiting to rejoin Oliver! And the imagery is of her heart as a hunter, and her quarry is her dead love, and the "arrow" that will catch him is her own death, which she longs for. 
> 
> SEE? ALL THE CRYING! So here's the actual poem, in case you want to cry too:
> 
> The Lonely Hunter
> 
> Green branches, green branches, I see you  
> beckon; I follow!  
> Sweet is the place you guard, there in the  
> rowan-tree hollow.  
> There he lies in the darkness, under the frail  
> white flowers,  
> Heedless at last, in the silence, of these sweet  
> midsummer hours.
> 
> But sweeter, it may be, the moss whereon he  
> is sleeping now,  
> And sweeter the fragrant flowers that may  
> crown his moon-white brow:  
> And sweeter the shady place deep in an Eden  
> hollow  
> Wherein he dreams I am with him---and,  
> dreaming, whispers, "Follow!"
> 
> Green wind from the green-gold branches,  
> what is the song you bring?  
> What are all songs for me, now, who no more  
> care to sing?  
> Deep in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to  
> me still,  
> But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on  
> a lonely hill.
> 
> Green is that hill and lonely, set far in a  
> shadowy place;  
> White is the hunter's quarry, a lost-loved hu-  
> man face:  
> O hunting heart, shall you find it, with arrow  
> of failing breath,  
> Led o'er a green hill lonely by the shadowy  
> hound of Death?
> 
> Green branches, green branches, you sing of  
> a sorrow olden,  
> But now it is midsummer weather, earth-  
> young, sunripe, golden:  
> Here I stand and I wait, here in the rowan-  
> tree hollow,  
> But never a green leaf whispers, "Follow, oh,  
> Follow, Follow!"
> 
> O never a green leaf whispers, where the  
> green-gold branches swing:  
> O never a song I hear now, where one was  
> wont to sing  
> Here in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to  
> me still,  
> But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on  
> a lonely hill.


End file.
